On this week’s show, Bree and Justin roll up their sleeves and take on projects left and right. It’s a look at the announcement of Project C and the imminent early access launch of Project Gorgon, among many other exciting developments this week!

It’s the Massively OP Podcast, an action-packed hour of news, tales, opinions, and gamer emails! And remember, if you’d like to send in your own letter to the show, use the “Tips” button in the top-right corner of the site to do so.

This week in Massively Overthinking, I want to talk about something out on the fringes of our genre: battle royale games. We’ve been watching BR take off, first with H1Z1, then the explosion of PUBG last summer and fall, and now Fortnite has taken the crown, becoming even more popular and raking in even more money, at least on console and potentially overall. And yet less than a year ago, we were embracing Fortnite as a PvE building game – see how blazingly fast Epic pivoted to catch this trend? I remember when PUBG started to plateau in the west even as it continued it climb in China, and I wondered then whether anything could ever dethrone it – and I have to say, I didn’t think it would be Fortnite.

So let’s talk about battle royale. Is it bleeding an online subgenre – MMOs, shooters, MOBAs, or survival sandboxes, or is it just something everyone’s tacked on top of existing gameplay? How will mobile keep up? And most importantly, is it a fad that’s destined to eventually fade away, or is it here to stay?

Remember way back in the long, long ago, before H1Z1 hit early access, split, reconstituted, renamed, didn’t launch, aborted a console port, and all those shenanigans? You know, back when the game was planned as a free-to-play title, but it didn’t happen?

Readers will recall that the game has appeared to be struggling on Steam over the past half year as other battle royale games picked up players; as of February, the game had apparently lost 90% of its playerbase since last summer, presumable to the likes of PUBG and Fortnite, the latter of which launched free.

The zombie sandbox half of the game, Just Survive, hasn’t made any free-to-play announcement yet.

After a lengthy wait, the first beta for Camelot Unchained is here at last! That’s what we’ll be saying in about a hundred days, because that beta doesn’t actually start until July 4th, but there’s a lot of work being done in the ramp-up for that beta. So now we have a bit of time to kill until then. Who’s up for Scrabble?

Meanwhile, we bid farewell to H1Z1, as the game… technically launched? It’s kind of ambiguous. We’ll go with a launch. Get out of here, H1Z1. Let’s get on with other beta news.

The cel-shaded action of SoulWorker Online is now available in open beta. Now, you know how we feel about free-to-play titles in open beta, but the game is still slated for an actual hard launch date, so we’ll let this be. For now. We’re watching you.

Last but not least, if you’ve ever wanted to demand that your friends kneel in deference when you enter the room, Crowfall’s Vassal system has you covered. But don’t take my word for it, check out two videoson the design.

Below us, the list of games we have in testing can also kneel in deference. You, dear readers, can just look through the list at your leisure. Do let us know if something is on there that ought to be listed differently, though, or if there’s something else awry. We appreciate it.

If you bought the rumors and teases last week that H1Z1, the artist formerly known as King of the Kill, was about to launch, then congrats: You bought the real deal. If you thought there would be a huge marketing push with lots of hoopla after three years of early access and an aborted launch two summers ago… now there I will be disappointing you.

Yes, the battle royale half of the original H1Z1 has technically launched today, shedding its early access tag and emblazoning a new February 28, 2018, launch date on its Steam portal. It’s still got its $19.99 pricetag, however.

Daybreak is capping off the stealth-launch with a totally not stealthy and in fact respectably massive patch to bring the game up to version one and season one; expect the planned spawn changes, combat balancing, way better match rewards, tweaks to account leveling, UI upgrades, and the new scoring model that ditches the high-kills scoring method and instead takes into account top 10 games, average placement, and kills. The studio also announced Auto Royale today if you’d prefer to with cars.

On this week’s show, Bree and Justin dive into deep mysteries, get ready for a slice of RIFT Prime, and once again try to figure out just what the heck Daybreak is doing with its H1Z1 franchise. Also, BREE SINGS. It’s as amazing as you always imagined.

It’s the Massively OP Podcast, an action-packed hour of news, tales, opinions, and gamer emails! And remember, if you’d like to send in your own letter to the show, use the “Tips” button in the top-right corner of the site to do so.

Last week, it became clear that H1Z1 has forfeited a ton of ground in the battle over battle royale games as it’s lost 90% of its Steam playerbase since July. Now, I’m gonna be honest: I don’t really care about H1Z1 for its own sake. Even if the game didn’t make me internally cringe at the “Star Wars Galaxies fans can come home” silliness, I really dislike zombie settings, I find battle royale modes dull, and the game has been a mess for years, with missed launches, missed ports, and more marketing do-overs and renames than I can shake a sawed-off shotgun at.

But I’ve nevertheless had the impression that H1Z1 was propping up Daybreak quite a lot, which made it hard to bear it any ill will. It really was a popular game on Steam for the last few years and had to have made quite a bit of dough. We’ve already noted this year that Daybreak’s down to a bare handful of titles, and I have to wonder whether DC Universe Online’s console crowd, the vets stretched thin over the EverQuest and PlanetSide franchises, and the Standing Stone publishing hustle are enough.

And, of course, there’s a whole list of games down below, games that are forever in testing and those that are just in testing for the moment. Is something on there that ought not be any longer? Do let us know so we can correct it. Or just share beta stories in the comments, that’d be cool too.

But Daybreak may be preparing for a real launch at last. Friend of the site Babagra.pl pointed out to us that during Friday’s livestream, Daybreak showed off a season one screen and suggested there “won’t be any more pre-seasons.” That could just be a segue into the “Royalty Showdown” event that’s going on today, as the top 75 players from the 7th preseason will compete (the first event starts today at 1 p.m. EST). Or it could mean the game is finally preparing to launch.

In the meantime, the studio’s just rolled out a ton of big changes to the test server, including pre-match spawn selection timeouts, full-heal consumables, and new loot crate rewards for winning matches.

The MMO industry moves along at the speed of information, and sometimes we’re deluged with so much news here at Massively Overpowered that some of it gets backlogged. That’s why there’s The MOP Up: a weekly compilation of smaller MMO stories and videos that you won’t want to miss. Seen any good MMO news? Hit us up through our tips line!

Well here is something that we learned today: the meaning of ENAS. If you’re not deep into the PvP shooter scene, the East North American Strafe is “a method of movement that involves moving your mouse back and forth rapidly while running forward and strafing to make yourself extremely difficult to be shot by other players” that is especially prevalent in H1Z1.

And because the developers see ENAS as straddling the line between skill play and exploit, they are attempting a solution to artificially counter it and level the playing field so everyone doesn’t look and act like jittery deer.

Daybreak’s fix here is a “movement modifier” that kicks in when a player starts juking the mouse rapidly. If the system detects rapid mouse movement (due to ENAS), it reduces a player’s speed and makes him or her easier to hit. Additionally, all movement speed in the game is being slightly lowered. The studio will be trying out this system and tweaking the penalty on the test server before bringing it over to live.

Of course, you can’t really blame him. By which I mean you can totally blame him, but it’s a common misconception that turns up time and again. People talk about copyright, trademark, and patent issues in the same general melange of “this company owns this,” and the thing is that they’re related terms and concepts that nevertheless mean very, very different things.